Ill-Gotten Panes

by Jennifer McAndrews

  “You know, it may be time for you to think about getting your own car and stop giving me stress attacks by helping yourself to mine.”

  But I wouldn’t need a car if I returned to the city—to most any city. I caught myself before I shared that thought with Grandy. I suspected me having his car was not really what the call was about. I suspected his world was a little upside down, and he was looking for areas in which to regain control. If I were him, I’d start with reclaiming my possessions, too.

  The noise of the copy machine stopped. Leaning out the doorway, I peered down the hall. “I gotta go. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  I ended the call before he could respond, before I could even catch the sound of his sputtering.

  “Here you go.” The brunette clerk handed me a stapled bundle of papers, legal-sized. No chance I could fold them down sufficiently to tuck them in my little cross-body bag. “Two bucks.”

  Setting the papers down on her desk so I could wrestle my wallet free, I flinched when my phone pinged another incoming call. One eye on my wallet, one eye on the phone display, I read Carrie’s number while Bon Jovi played softly. “Sorry.” I shot an apologetic look at the clerk, but she wasn’t looking. She had gone back to pulling her purse over her shoulder and taking up her keys from her desk.

  I didn’t think she’d mind if I picked up the call, but she’d done me a favor getting the copies instead of insisting I come back later. Rude wasn’t a fair payback.

  Passing her the two bucks, I thanked her earnestly for her help and skittered out of the office before she could boot me out physically. Getting out of the office for lunch on time—or even early—was something I could wholeheartedly relate to.

  Down the stairs and back out the door, I once again immersed myself in the midday heat. There was not a breeze to be had, not a wisp of a cloud in the rich blue sky. I shielded my eyes with a hand and made my way back to the Jeep, clutching keys and copies to my chest.

  Inside the SUV, I started the engine and gathered the patience required to wait for the air-conditioning to kick in. While I waited, I skimmed the agreement between the Wenwood Town Council and Stone Mountain Construction. At second glance, the pages appeared covered with legal mumbo jumbo interspersed with English articles such as the, and a, with an occasional whereupon to make me feel like I hadn’t wasted all that money on a college education.

  I folded the papers in two and tucked them between my seat and the console. I needed to look at them another time, when I could focus.

  It wasn’t until I pulled into Grandy’s driveway and tapped the horn that I placed a return call to Carrie. Chatting with her while waiting for Grandy to emerge from the house seemed like a good idea. As a bonus, I figured he most likely wouldn’t give me too much grief about making off with his car if I was on the phone; he wouldn’t want to be overheard.

  “You rang?” I said when Carrie picked up the phone.

  “Oh, hon,” she said, “we have to talk.”

  Hon? Why the endearment? Tendrils of worry raised gooseflesh on my arms. I forced my voice bright. “What’s up?”

  “All right, listen. I’m telling you this because I think you should know, but don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

  The slam of the door alerted me to Grandy’s imminent arrival. I glanced up, wished away my sudden increase in anxiety as he walked, head high, down the steps. He carried a worn leather satchel in lieu of a briefcase, and his somber blue tie paired with a starched white shirt made him look like a throwback to the early sixties—proud, dignified, certain.

  I prompted Carrie. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a letter to the editor in the Town Crier that came out today.”

  I knew the Crier. Grandy subscribed, kept each week’s issue in the reading basket in the bathroom.

  The man himself yanked open the door and climbed into the passenger seat with the verve of a man half his age. “Let’s go.”

  I nodded, threw the Jeep into reverse. Checking over my shoulder, I eased up on the brake and let the SUV roll down the drive. “I’m guessing you’re calling because you have an issue with the letter?” I said into the phone.

  Grandy didn’t have to raise his voice to communicate his displeasure. What he did was switch his voice from speech to growl. When he ground out “Georgia” as the tires hit the street, I knew I’d made a grave error.

  “Promise you won’t hold it against me?” Carrie asked.

  “I’m going to have to call you back,” I said. “I’m driving.”

  “Put me on speaker,” she said.

  “Georgia,” Grandy grumbled.

  I clenched the steering wheel tight with one hand, the phone with the other. “I have Grand—Pete with me.”

  “Oh, God,” Carrie said. “I take it back. Don’t put me on speaker. Call me back as soon as you can.”

  She clicked off before I could stop her. Oh God could in no way be construed as a positive response to Grandy’s presence.

  I slid my gaze to him as I lowered the silent phone to my lap. The combination of Carrie’s call and Grandy’s insistence on getting to the bank early made me doubly uneasy. “Everything okay, Grandy?”

  “Of course everything’s okay,” he growled. “What could possibly be bad about my granddaughter talking on a cell phone while she’s driving? Unless of course you consider my granddaughter borrowing my car, talking on the phone while she’s driving it, and doing heaven knows what else.”

  I bit my tongue—figuratively, of course. Truly biting my tongue would have been painful, and really the guilt I felt over Grandy’s perfectly well-founded complaint was pain enough. “Sorry, Grandy. I wanted to get to Town Hall early and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You could have left a note, you know. I can read.”

  “I did leave a note. I put it . . . oh, I bet the kitten . . .” Focusing on driving as by the book as possible, I let the soft whir of the air conditioner motor and the shoosh of the tires on the road fill in the blanks my cowardice left.

  We were almost to the bank before I felt comfortable enough to attempt conversation. “Aside from me taking your car without permission,” I began, adding a bit of teasing to my voice, hoping to avoid retreading the earlier disagreement, “did anything else happen this morning? Hear from anyone?”

  He leaned into his seatback, tugged absently at the knot of his tie. “Your little flea magnet thought it important to attack my toes while I slept.”

  I pressed my lips tight to keep the laughter in.

  “And clearly she thought hanging from the belt of my bathrobe was the best method of traveling from my room to the bathroom, where she captured and ingested a spider.”

  “Ew, Grandy, don’t let her eat . . . wild things.”

  “Why not? It’s protein. It’s good for her.”

  His improved mood made me feel marginally better. And yet . . .

  “That’s all?” I asked. “Nothing else unusual happen?”

  “Why don’t you just ask the question you want to ask, Georgia? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

  Stopped at a red light, left-turn indicator clicking away, I wished I could close my eyes, avoid seeing his reaction in the event the topic reawakened his ire. “Did you get this week’s Town Crier yet?” I asked.

  He folded his hands in his lap. “Let me see now. It’s Monday. And the mail comes early. And the Crier comes by mail. So I would say yes, I’ve got the Crier.”

  I allowed myself a moment’s gratitude that sarcasm didn’t aromatically bleed through pores like sweat did. The confines of the Jeep were too small to contain the abundance of aroma Grandy’s attitude would create.

  Turning into the bank parking lot, I asked, “Did you read it?”

  “I put it in the bathroom.”

  I let out a breath. “Grandy . . .”

&nbs
p; “No, I did not read it. What’s this all about anyway?”

  With the Jeep tucked into a parking space near enough to the door that even Grandy couldn’t complain, I threw the gear into neutral and shifted in my seat to face him. “Something Carrie said. You know, during the call you wouldn’t let me take.”

  “It’s the law, Georgia, and it’s for your own safety. And mine.” He released his seat belt, turned to glare at me. “What was it Carrie said?”

  I shook my head. “She didn’t get a chance to explain. I got the sense, though, that something in this week’s Crier may be, um, displeasing. I’ll give her a call back now and find out.”

  A bit of Grandy’s bluster faded in on itself, as though whatever might be in the Crier was capable of hollowing him out. “Let me know . . .” He exhaled slowly. “Let me know what you find out. And turn off the car. Do you have any idea how expensive gasoline is?”

  “Do you have any idea how hot it is? I’ll melt without the air-conditioning.”

  He glared. I caved. But no way was baking in a Jeep part of my plan.

  I locked up the SUV and trailed Grandy into the bank. He marched directly across the green-carpeted lobby to the commercial accounts queue, head up, eyes forward. Several paces back, I saw what he didn’t: the abandoned tasks, the following eyes, the speculative stares. A shiver raised the gooseflesh on my arms once again. Surely not everyone in the bank was watching my grandfather. Surely the beer-bellied gent chatting with the blonde half his age wasn’t whispering about my grandfather.

  Rather than linger near the doorway waiting, I edged around the perimeter of the bank and slid into a scratchy fabric club chair, cell phone in hand. Keeping watch on the people watching Grandy, I redialed Carrie.

  “Tell me now, tell me fast,” I said when she picked up.

  “Georgia?”

  Even though, really, I had no reason to expect she would recognize my voice, I rolled my eyes. “Yes, it’s Georgia. And before you ask, I promise not to blame you for what’s in the paper.”

  “Okay. Let me get it. I’ll read it to you.”

  “No, don’t do that. I don’t know how much time I have. Just give me the highlights.” On the commercial accounts line, Grandy was next up for assistance.

  “Oh. Oh.” A clunk and a thud came over the line, and I pictured Carrie banging into the edge of a display table and toppling antique picture frames in her haste to get back to where she’d left the paper. “I could do that, I guess. That might even be a little bit, you know, nicer.”

  “Nicer?”

  “Not as offensive,” she half whispered. “Then again, telling you in my own words . . . kinda makes me feel really guilty.”

  I put a hand to my head. “Carrie, please, just tell me, before I start imagining some really awful things about Grandy. This is about Grandy, right? About Pete?”

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “About Pete, and Tony Himmel, and even about you.”

  “Me?”

  “About how people involved in a murder investigation have no business attending the wake of the victim. How that’s in really bad taste and an insult to the deceased and his family and friends and neighbors, and how—”

  “Wait a second. Grandy wasn’t at the wake.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “Well, then why is he being singled out? And why me? I didn’t have anything to do with . . . anything.”

  “No, but you’re Pete’s granddaughter. I guess they figure that if he’s being questioned about a murder, then you must be guilty, too.”

  The words hit me with the force of a physical blow. My breath caught and the muscles of my stomach clenched. “Please tell me you’re just speculating and you don’t actually believe that.”

  “Oh, Georgia, of course not.”

  Curling over in the chair, I put my elbow on my knee and my head in my hand. I knew this would do nothing to prevent the people in the bank from seeing me—I no longer had the convictions of a three-year-old, after all—but it would prevent me from accidentally making eye contact with Grandy.

  I supposed it had been only a matter of time before the whole of Wenwood and parts beyond knew about the police questioning Grandy. And yet . . .

  “Is this normal?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Do the police always disclose who they’ve been talking to in relation to cases?”

  The jingle of the bell over the door at Carrie’s shop carried clearly enough across the phone that the bell could have been at my elbow. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a big secret, though.”

  “But it couldn’t have been common knowledge, could it?”

  “That’s why I called,” Carrie said. “If it wasn’t before, it is now.”

  Incomplete questions and ideas swirled through my mind, none forming into coherence in time to voice them.

  “I have to go,” she said, “I have a customer. Call me later?”

  I mumbled something sounding vaguely affirmative and disconnected the call.

  The Town Crier couldn’t possibly reach every household in Wenwood, could it? Even if it did, not everyone read it.

  Did they?

  How many people knew Grandy had been questioned? And Tony Himmel? How many people agreed with what was in the paper, agreed we shouldn’t have been at the wake? Attending had seemed like the right thing to do, but perhaps I’d been wrong. Seriously, it wasn’t like Emily Post had an official position on the matter.

  Pushing to my feet, lifting my head at last, I was vaguely relieved to realize the other people in the bank had returned to their tasks. Or, at least, they had given up watching Grandy as though he was going to do something more interesting than collect a bank bag full of rolled coins and singles.

  I crossed the lobby and met him beside the teller’s window. On the other side of the thick Plexiglas, the bank clerk was running singles through the bill-counting machine.

  “What did Carrie say?” Grandy asked.

  I kept my yap shut while I searched for the right way to break the news.

  “I’ll put it this way,” he said, voice pitched low, face turned away from the window, “what’s in the paper will explain why everyone’s staring, won’t it?”

  I answered his concern with false brightness. “What makes you think people are staring?” Tapping the window lightly with his knuckles, he nodded at the glass. “This,” he said.

  To understand what he was saying, I had to take a step back. It was then I spied the reflection of the bank floor and the eyes of all the employees turned our way. “Nice espionage work, Grandy.” I grinned. “How long has that James Bond flick been running at the dine-in? You’re picking up some good tips.”

  He smiled at the clerk, who slid bundled singles under the glass, but he scowled at me. “Just tell me why everyone’s staring.”

  Sighing, I held open the burlap bag Grandy produced from the depths of his satchel so he could slide in the bills. Already, the clerk was pushing rolled coins under the glass. “There was an editorial or letter to the editor or something in the Town Crier outing you and Tony Himmel as suspects in Andy Edgers’s murder. And lambasting me for going to the wake.”

  The muscles of his jaw rolled as he clenched his teeth. He glowered down at me, exhaled volubly through his nose. “I told you not to go to that thing,” he ground out.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  He straightened, standing tall enough to make me feel like a child again. “Was I at all unclear in my displeasure?”

  I admitted his belief I was making a mistake had been apparent, but that was hardly the same as telling me not to go. But the teller’s window at the bank was not the ideal place to conduct our disagreement. “Let’s stick to the point on this one, okay? Anyone who read or is reading or is going to read the Crier will know the police had you in for questioning, that you’re a suspect.”

/>   Nodding his thanks to the teller, Grandy reached for my elbow and turned me toward the door. “I have a feeling that’s not news to a lot of people.”

  As we pushed through the exit doors, I glanced back at him. “What makes you say that? All those people in there staring? You don’t think it’s because of the article?”

  “I think they were staring at you because of the article. Me, they’re already suspicious of.” As we crossed the parking lot, he held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

  “You’ve lived here your whole life, Grandy. These people know you. They know you wouldn’t do such a thing.” I passed him the keys then waited while he unlocked the car and powered down the windows. “If they’re staring, it’s because they’re wondering how you’re handling all the attention, that’s all,” I said, climbing into the car.

  “If that were all, they’d be coming to the dine-in to get a look at me, instead of staying away in droves.”

  He busied himself checking the mirrors, adjusting his seat, retuning the radio to the all-news station. To each move, he gave his full attention, ignoring me.

  “You’re just being paranoid, Grandy. I’ve been at the dine-in with you. You and double-oh-seven are pulling in a good crowd.”

  Backing the car out of the space, he scowled. “Not so. When we get up there, you’ll see the receipts. You’ll see.”

  I opted not to continue protesting. Grandy was right. When I saw the receipts, I would know whether his concerns were grounded in fact or paranoia. I trusted numbers. Unlike people, numbers never lied.

  11

  Grandy cleared his desk of the random odds and ends that had collected there, giving me space to spread out the tax withholding binders and line up the time clock punch cards. Why Grandy persisted in manually preparing payroll remained a mystery to me. Control issues? Secrecy? Frugality? Whatever the reason, on that afternoon I was pleased to be lending a hand to the task of putting pay vouchers in his employees’ hands. The counting, the columns, the ten-key machine were as comforting to me as ice cream to others.